ABSTRACT
This introduction chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discusses in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes the relationship between the evolution of modern natural science and the development of modern political thought and practice and outlines the political importance of the ethic driving modern natural science. It provides the implications of the destruction of this ethic that has encouraged us to question, reason, and resist for over three centuries. The book establishes the link between natural philosophy and political philosophy by connecting the work of Bacon to subsequent seventeenth-century political thought. It explore the influence of Francis Bacon on the political and philosophical works of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, both widely acknowledged as among the most influential political thinkers of the seventeenth century. The book presents the birth and trajectory of modern natural science in the seventeenth century, then addresses a crucial question: What is science?
